Hmmm. Wonder if I can get my employer to pay for my subscription . . .
Yesterday, one of our sales reps managed to lose the .ddf file for the Act! database which contains most of the customers she’s been in touch with. I’ve managed to resurrect most of it, but I’m still working on her notes which are stored in a .blb file. This, of course, is the most important information in the database (ok, names and addresses are more important, but not by much). I’m familiar with the old dBase technology Act! is built on, and I’m familiar with database design. However, I haven’t been able to spot anything resembling a foreign key in the .blb file which contains the notes, so I have no way of knowing which bit of text goes with which person.
Can anyone here help? I tried Act!'s tech support yesterday when I realized what had happened. Their response was, “Give us the disk and we may be able to salvage some data.” I’m already past that point in my own salvage operations. Do we have an Act! guru around here who can tell me how to decipher a .blb file? Right now, it’s a blob, all right!
Thanks in advance, and appropriate repayment will be considered,
CJ
For notes records, the regarding field in the history table (*.hdb) contains a reference to the location of the data in the blob file. I’m not sure how the regarding field is encoded to indicate where in the blob file the data is stored; it may just be an offset for the byte in the blob where the notes text starts.
That’s how you link up the contact with their notes - the hdb has a contactid field which is a foreign key to the contact table, and its regarding field references the blb.
Depending on what you’re trying to recover, I might be able to help. I’ve done some programming with Act in the past.
Unfortunately, the .hdb file comes up almost completely empty.
What happened was our sales rep was trying to copy the entire contents of her Database folder to a zip disk by opening up Windows Explorer and dragging and dropping that folder to her zip drive. While doing so, she got a message saying her disk was full. At that point, she asked me for another disk and, since I didn’t know what she was doing, I gave her one. She somehow managed to move, rather than copy the files, but the .ddf file associated with the Act! database called “Main Database” disappeared. I haven’t been able to find it or a copy of it on her hard drive or on either of the two zip disks involved. I do have the remaining 22 files associated with this database, and I’ve been able to reload basic contact information from the .mdb file into a replacement Act! database. I’ve also recovered what look like her activities from a file called “Main database.adb” and put them into an Excel spreadsheet in a format which will make it easier for her to set them up in Act! again, although doing so manually will be time-consuming. A file called “Main database.blb” exists on both zip disks. It’s empty on the first disk, but the second disk looks like it has her notes. I also have the remaining files associated with this database. Of course she kept the most important information in the notes section of this database; then again, so would I.
I appreciate the help you’ve given me so far, and I’d appreciate any more help you or anyone else could give me.
Unfortunately, the .hdb file comes up almost completely empty.
What happened was our sales rep was trying to copy the entire contents of her Database folder to a zip disk by opening up Windows Explorer and dragging and dropping that folder to her zip drive. While doing so, she got a message saying her disk was full. At that point, she asked me for another disk and, since I didn’t know what she was doing, I gave her one. She somehow managed to move, rather than copy the files, but the .ddf file associated with the Act! database called “Main Database” disappeared. I haven’t been able to find it or a copy of it on her hard drive or on either of the two zip disks involved. I do have the remaining 22 files associated with this database, and I’ve been able to reload basic contact information from the .mdb file into a replacement Act! database. I’ve also recovered what look like her activities from a file called “Main database.adb” and put them into an Excel spreadsheet in a format which will make it easier for her to set them up in Act! again, although doing so manually will be time-consuming. A file called “Main database.blb” exists on both zip disks. It’s empty on the first disk, but the second disk looks like it has her notes. I also have the remaining files associated with this database. Of course she kept the most important information in the notes section of this database; then again, so would I.
I appreciate the help you’ve given me so far, and I’d appreciate any more help you or anyone else could give me.
Sorry, I should have mentioned that the activity table references the blob file too, so those notes in the blb may belong to activity records. In the adb the reference field is details.
Without the ddf file you’re probably not going to be able to read the data using any of Act’s utilities. I think they all depend on this file to open the database. You might try running the database through the scan & repair option in the ActDiag program. I don’t know if it will be able to repair the database, but it should at least give some information about broken references to the blb file.
You’re right, I couldn’t, which is why I’m now trying to salvage whatever I can. I’m afraid running ActDiag on the database didn’t work, either. It backs up successfully, but when I run the Data Diagnostic Tool, I get the following:
Critical Error #53"File not found" occurred.
After I click on “OK”, I can’t close the Data Diagnostic Tool window. If there’s any information on the .blb file, I’m afraid I don’t know how to interpret it. If you need me to send you a screen cap, my e-mail address is in my profile. (I forgot to see if yours is before starting this reply.)